NY serial killer Arthur Shawcross dead at 63

NY serial killer Arthur Shawcross dead at 63 Staff and agencies19 November, 2008
Shawcross died late Monday at an Albany hospital, where he had been taken after complaining of leg pain earlier in the day at the Sullivan Correctional Facility, Corrections Department spokesman Erik Kriss said Tuesday. The cause of death was still under investigation, he said.
Shawcross‘ victims, most of them prostitutes, were killed in the period from March 1988 to January 1990. At the time, he was on parole after serving 15 years in prison for killing two children in northern New York‘s Watertown in 1972.
He was convicted of killing 10 of the women in December 1990 after jurors deliberated only 6 1/2 hours. Jurors rejected defense arguments that he was legally insane at the time of the killings because of brain damage, abuse during childhood and his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam.
He did not testify during his trial, but jurors were shown videotapes of him being interviewed under hypnosis by a defense psychiatrist, Dr. Dorothy Lewis. He switched in and out of a high-pitched woman‘s voice and told Lewis he had once been a cannibal in medieval England. He also described childhood incestuous relations with a sister and wartime atrocities and cannibalism in Vietnam.
But in videotaped interviews with a prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. Park Dietz, Shawcross said he never heard voices or had different personalities. Dietz argued that Shawcross was faking mental illness to avoid prison.
Inmates bought their own art supplies and kept half the proceeds from their sales, with the other half going to the state Crime Victims Board. A portrait of the late Princess Diana was among 10 sketches and paintings by Shawcross that sold for as much as $540 each in 2001.


Source:

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